This morning (1st Sep) bang on cue the first mist of the autumn was hanging around. I’d have called it a haar but it persisted all the way to Dunfermline; haar usually only lies close to the coast and Dunfermline tends to avoid it.

Whether this presages another bad winter like last year I don’t know. I do know it’s not usually so cold so early.

The tree at work I have mentioned before is showing its autumn colours again. Mind you, it wasn’t looking too green even in June.

Winter woollies, then.

For clubs like Dumbarton it’s been like a close season this past month – only without the friendly matches.

Fingers crossed for tomorrow.

Despite some patches of overlying water that had not been there on Saturday the pond in the park was still almost compleletely frozen, though, and skaters and hockeyists were still plying their skills.

This may not be true for much longer.

I finally got to the park today, to see the goings on.

A nice tribute to the human spirit that so much activity was taking place and fun being had in the face of what others were moaning about.

It wasn’t worth the council’s time erecting this sign.

Not quite a bonspiel but the local curlers were enjoying themselves.

An ice hockey game with a goal cobbled together from bits of wood.

The last saloon in town. The inlet to the pond has kept enough water moving to stop it freezing here. The gulls were making a nuisance of themselves.

There were lots of skaters about too. All the revellers had had to brush the snow off the ice to get started.

This is the fountain further into the park. There was still water flowing from it despite the cold.

This means I get presents two days in a row. A downside is that I then have to wait a whole year before getting any more.

It also makes things difficult for my family in getting me cards and such for my birthday. In particular, the shops seem not to stock birthday cards in December.

I mentioned last year I have a collection of tins. I got two new ones this year; both nice examples – with biscuits in them!

My eldest son was stuck for a birthday present. The good lady suggested The American Civil War documentary series from a few years back on DVD. He thought it wouldn’t be very festive but the good lady assured him I’d be delighted. I was. (I did videotape it when it was first on; but the DVD is more durable.)

Since it hasn’t been the weather for gallivanting – unusually heavy snowfall and unusually persistent frost and ice for Kirkcaldy – a lot of my holiday has been spent (re)watching the series. Review will follow.

Back to work tomorrow. Ridiculously early in the year. I’ve never before been back on a January banks’ holiday.

The Climate Change summit in Copenhagen has failed to come up with a binding agreement. No surprise there. President Obama, in particular, was always going to find any sort of deal hard to sell at home, and harder again to implement. China and India are understandably reluctant to hamper themselves in their efforts to attain higher living standards.

Still, Private Frazer’s catch phrase is only too appropriate. Over-exploiting our resources to the point of catastrophe is something humans seem to do.

The Easter Islanders and the Maya are more than likely to have contributed to the demise of their environments. Water extraction in the south-western United States is outstripping replacement – so much so that the Rio Grande is now little more than a trickle in some stretches. And the fall of the Sumerian and Roman Empires may well have been due to their over exploitation of wood resources.

While global warming – whether or not it’s occurring (natural fluctuations mean the trend is anything but smooth yet average yearly world temperatures over the past few decades tend to be higher than at any time on record; with the highest being more recent) and whether or not it’s human-made – may or may not lead to deleterious climatic and environmental consequences, it seems axiomatic to me that we as a species couldn’t keep throwing all sorts of stuff into the atmosphere (and the oceans) without causing damage of some sort; damage which may be irreparable in the short term.

In this respect it is possible that ocean acidification due to uptake of CO₂ may even be more of a disaster for non-human species than warming of the atmosphere and seas.

It may seem strange to be going on about this when the country is experiencing what used to be appropriate seasonal weather but if the North Atlantic Conveyor – sometimes known as the Gulf Stream – switches off, we’re in for a lot of this. Think Labrador; with bells on. It has switched off in the past and an influx of fresh water from melting Greenland ice sheets will mean Arctic waters won’t be dense enough to sink they way they do now.

Still; no overall agreement may be better than a flawed agreement. But only if lessons are learned.

The junketing involved at Copenhagen has been an unedifying spectacle. And such gatherings attract all sorts of ancillary activities which only contribute to the problem they are affecting to solve.

There must be a better way to deal with the world’s problems than this.

Dawn still gets progressively later over the next week and even though sunset has passed its earliest by now it gets later by a smaller margin so the days still shorten.

Had the clocks not changed in October I would already have had a month or so of travelling to work in the dark (with daylight only appearing around ten o’clock) and there would have been little or no lightness in the evening to compensate. Plus after the New Year another month of the same grind to get through.

(I’ve heard that people in Norway who only get one hour of daylight at this time of year don’t bother with it and just keep their curtains closed.)

As it is the mornings will be brightening from the beginning of January. And there’s a holiday season coming up. Reasons to be cheerful. Maybe.

I might give the game tomorrow night a miss, though.

I fogot to check it on Monday but made sure to yesterday and there were definite signs of yellow leaves.

Maybe it’s a species that just does this at the back end of August/beginning of September but it seems extremely early to me.

It might be another not very good winter.

It was a good day for it what with the sun splitting the pavements (as my father used to say.)

To break the trip up the good lady and I dropped into an antique centre at Garrion on the way back. The centre, which is part of a complex including a Garden Centre, various retailing ventures and the obligatory tea/coffee shop, is named after the two bridges which carry the A71 across the Clyde a couple of hundred metres west from there.

We didn’t actually buy anything yesterday but I include this link just in case anyone wants to go.

The bridges themselves are quite scenic so I took a few pictures.

This is the older bridge (the northern of the two.) Due to the short distance between the two bridges I couldn’t get the whole of this one in a single frame so this is actually a stitched together amalgam of two photographs.

This is the newer bridge which has a nice arched span. It was built in 2001. The two act as a kind of roundabout a bit like a motorway flyover. Westbound traffic takes the new bridge, eastbound traffic the old one.

Here’s the view from the southern bridge.

Scotland in summer. Don’t you just love it?